


United Kingdom: 12 Points!

by 221b_hound



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Drunk John, Eurovision, First Kiss, M/M, Pining Sherlock, Serenading, Song Lyrics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-24
Updated: 2015-05-24
Packaged: 2018-04-01 00:11:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,516
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3998530
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John is at a Eurovision party with some old army mates. Sherlock intends to whisk him away from the horror, but gets dragged into it instead. But it looks like two pining hearts may get a little help from John's army buddies and several Eurovision-winning songs by the United Kingdom.</p>
            </blockquote>





	United Kingdom: 12 Points!

**Author's Note:**

> If you haven't caught up on Eurovision 2015, I have not put any spoilers in this story.
> 
> I am an Australian Eurovision tragic. LIke many of my countryfolk, I was up at 5am this morning to see the live broadcast. We were so stoked to be there! We also broke the text voting system, so many of us tried to vote. We all fervently hope that Europe lets us try again next year. Let's face it - half our population is backpacking around Europe and working in your bars at any given moment anyway.

The case was only a 5, but it was one of those cases which, if done well, would lead to more interesting work. So Sherlock took it up. Plus, he was bored, because John was off at some annual thing with his old army buddies.

Sherlock had some vague recollection of being invited along. John had seemed keen for Sherlock to meet his old friends. Sherlock was less keen. He was dreadful in social situations of that nature, and didn’t think it showed him to advantage.

He veered away from thinking about why he only wanted John to see him when being shown to advantage. Mostly because he was aware that John wasn’t bothered either way, and of how much he sometimes wished that John wanted to show him off.

Which may have been what John had in mind in inviting him, but would probably result in the opposite of what was intended, and then John would be cross. And Sherlock didn’t want John to look at him with that cross look (if it could be helped, which, frankly, wasn’t always possible, the work being what it was and the rest of the world being the idiots that they were). Sherlock much preferred it when John looked at him with that unfathomable, fond look, a more frequent occurrence these days, though not frequently enough.

Sherlock also veered away from thinking about how much he wanted John to give him that fond look (accompanied by the licking of a lip, that avid leaning towards him, as though Sherlock were magnetic north and John were a compass).

Nope. No thinking about that at all.

So Sherlock took and then promptly solved the case – it only took two hours – and then stood on the pavement on Baker Street staring up at their windows. He pouted sourly at the idea of returning to an empty flat.

To make it even more unappealing, Mrs Hudson was having her poker night downstairs, and if he had to listen to the poker group’s mix tape of early 80s rock ballads played at full volume for the next three hours, there would be murder – and he’d promised John, since the Air Supply-and-Phil-Collins marathon last time, not to commit that murder without John around to help him hide the bodies.

He texted John to meet him outside, forgetting John wasn’t home. That annoying fact came home to him when the reply he got went:

 _Doing Eurovision with the lads. Im winnign_  
_the drinkign gaame or losing lol. Got Azzzerbaijn_  
_in the sweep. I’m fcked._

Sherlock replied.

_What is Eurovision? SH_

His phone beeped back with:

_Yr kidding right?_

Sherlock was not kidding, and he was bored, and it was mildly diverting to work out where John had gone for his reunion this evening, and so Sherlock proceeded to _find_ him. He wouldn’t have to do anything so appalling as hang around and socialise. He could invent a case and drag John out of the pub and do something better. _Anything._ Angelo’s maybe. Or Chinese.

The moment Sherlock walked in the door of the Harp and Horn, he knew it was a terrible mistake. He intended to retreat immediately, but by dreadful bad fortune, John spotted him at once and raised a half empty glass of beer and a shout of greeting.

“Heey! Sherlock!! Come and meet my mates. Guys, this is Sherlock, he’s fuckin’ amazing.”

Six men loitering with John around a TV near the bar turned as one, beamed at him and sloshily raised glasses of beer in greeting.

“Heeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeey!!” they all roared, like a pack of terrifyingly friendly bears.

And none of that was as bad as the fact that all of them, including John, were wearing… glitter wigs. Is that what they were called? Or tinsel wigs? Or? Sherlock decided just to call them Monstrous Sparkling Head Warmers and be done with.

He still could have made it out of the pub, and was backing up at tremendous speed in order to do so, only John had launched himself across the open space – nimbly negotiating his mates, other drunk patrons and three people dressed like Ukrainian folk dancers, which was impressive given his level of inebriation – grabbed Sherlock by the wrist and dragged him towards the bar.

“A beer for Sherlock!” he shouted.

Another roar of approbation from the tinsel-headed friendly bears. Beer was duly sloshed from a jug into a glass and pressed into his hand.

Then someone from the crowd looked at the screen, hooted, “Costume Change!!! Skoll!!”

Everyone tipped their heads back and downed whatever was left of their pints. John giggled, looked meaningfully at Sherlock and nodded at him encouragingly.

“John, I don’t…”

“Costume changes mid-act mean skolling.”

“That doesn’t…”

“Glitter – sip; white suits – gulp; pyrotechnics or wind machine – chug; mid-act costume changes – skol. Those are the rules. Skol, Sherlock, or forfeit.”

“Forfeit, then.”

John grinned devilishly. “Forfeit is dropping your trousers and running around the pub three times singing England’s entry for this year. You really don’t want to forfeit.”

Sherlock didn’t understand a word coming out of John’s mouth and, remembering the Power Ballads from Hell back at Baker Street, decided he might as well engage in a learning experience. He could delete it all later (as he’d done with Eurovision most years, which was why he didn’t remember it).

He downed his beer in a long swallow, and finished to find John staring at his bobbing Adam’s apple.

“You are,” said John, “A very long drink of water.” Then he giggled, then the blokes behind him cheered, so he cheered as well, and turned to find out what was going on.

Sherlock peered at the screen as well, and assembled a few salient facts.

The TV show hosts – bland, plastic and irritating to a woman and to a… person in a dress with a beard; well, she was interesting at any rate – were talking about voting. (John and the Friendly Bears had all taken out their phones and were texting madly and asking each other things like ‘was that the really angry woman with the rooster on her shoulders, or the one that looked like the little dude from One Direction? Don’t give me that, my daughter’s a fan. Still crying over Zayn, yeah.’)

In short order, Sherlock noted: _international song competition, no, **European** song competition, but that is nonsensical. Israel is not part of Europe. Australia is definitely not part of Europe. What the hell…?_

“Why are Israel and Australia competing in a European song competition?” Sherlock demanded to know.

“WE ARE ALL EUROPEAN!” yelled out one of the bears, whose ancestors clearly came from India, so that made less than no sense.

“The Australians cried until we let them!” shouted another man, “They were supposed to send Kylie. Bastards.”

“It’s a… a….a….” John, trying to be helpful, waved his hand in the air, “A thing. A broadcasting… thing.” He turned. “Rajeev. Rajeev. RAJEEV. Why is Israel in this thing?”

“Their broadcasting whatsit is a member of the European Broadcasting Union, which hosts it, so they get a free kick,” yelled Rajeev of _We Are All European_ infamy.

“That doesn’t explain Australia,” complained Sherlock.

“Nothing explains Australia,” shouted a very tall and broad man, very bearlike indeed, who had a very deep voice and a purple tinsel wig, “Have you seen what they feed their kids? Vegemite. And poisonous snakes. Makes the fuckers hard to kill, though, I’ll give ‘em that.”

Sherlock decided that this was something he didn’t need in his mind palace and tried to escape again, only to find the tall, broad, bearlike man blocking his path. The mountain bear slung an arm across Sherlock’s shoulders and gave him a very friendly and only slightly painful sideways hug.

“Hi, Sherlock. I’m Davey. John talks about you a lot,” he said, giving Sherlock another bone-creaking sideways hug, “It’s great you made it. Did he tell you all about how we used to do this every year, wherever we were stationed? Pick up the broadcast by satellite and watch the fuck out of Eurovision. Confused the absolute fuck out of the Americans if they were hanging around at the time. We’d charge the Australians a case of beer each to get in and they paid up every single time. Good times. Hang on. Here we go.”

He released Sherlock, but only because for some reason the whole crowd had started dancing. Then John and one of his army mates climbed up onto the bar and started singing at each other. John was flicking his gold-tinsel-glitter hair coquettishly over his shoulder and crooning a musical response to his mate:

 _Baby, I just wanna be, be around you all the time_  
_Oh God, I need you, oh..._

And his mate thumped John on the back and pointed towards Sherlock, and John looked alarmed, and then serious and then he launched into the chorus, directed entirely at Sherlock:

 _I'm running, I'm scared tonight_  
_I'm running, I'm scared of life_  
_I'm running, I'm scared of breathing_  
_'Cause I adore you_

Sherlock blinked rapidly, because John was both very, very drunk and very very, sincere, and it wasn’t just the alcohol talking, or rather singing, and he didn’t know what to make of it, or the sudden spike of excitement that made his heart beat double time, and then made his groin tingle, and then made his mouth dry.

John’s mates roared encouragement again, and he grinned at them, then at Sherlock – a little shyly this time – and finished the song.

Someone else leapt onto the counter then, and Sherlock recovered from his shock at John’s song sufficiently to realise that the music emanated from a karaoke machine that had been engaged while the ridiculous song competition that was _European-plus-cuckoos-in-the-nest_ held a bizarre interval before vote-counting began.

The man on the counter was singing something about a Napoleonic battle that was also a love song. It made even less sense than everything else, particularly when three others joined him up there and they kept trying to drunkenly co-ordinate singing at right angles to each other and switching every so often.

John had made his way over to Sherlock and was leaning against him in the manner of a rather smaller friendly bear. He was laughing, his expression open and happy and relaxed.

“Thanks for coming. I thought you had a case.”

“Solved it.”

“Course you did. You’re bloody amazing.”

On the counter, two people were now singing a song with the utterly inane refrain of _Ding-a-Dong_.

John’s feet were jigging about in a little dance as he raised his voice for the chorus, then sagged back against Sherlock again.

“You hate this, don’t you?” he asked Sherlock, sounding only half as drunk as previously, but still smiling.

“With a passion.”

“Used to be twelve of us,” John continued, “We’re all that’s left.” He gazed on the other six with an unfathomable fondness, then up at Sherlock with a fondness more unfathomable still, and which made Sherlock’s heart and mouth and groin do that funny thing again. “You can’t have not heard of Eurovision before.”

This leaping from subject to subject should have been annoying, but it only made Sherlock return John’s fond smile. He caught his face at it, and let it pass. The whole evening seemed to be like the Lords of Misrule of old. The carnival atmosphere, the tinsel wigs, the awful music – it all seemed to lend a curious air of suspension to the usual rules.

“Not a blessed note, I’m delighted to say.”

“Not even the years England won?”

“I sincerely hope we as a nation are not proud of that achievement.”

“Giddy with delight over it, I’m afraid.” John grinned again. “But no, come on, you’ve heard Puppet on a String?”

“Never.”

“You’re kidding. You know how it goes.”

And he sang.

 _I-I-I-I-I-I-I wonder if one day that, you'll say that, you care_  
_If you say you love me madly, I'll gladly, be there_  
_Like a puppet on a string_

Sherlock shook his head.

“Ok. But you gotta know Bucks Fizz. Worst earworm of the century.”

“No.”

“Sure you do.” John sang at him again and danced, waggling his hips and arms.

 _You gotta speed it up_  
_and then you gotta slow it down_  
_cos if you believe that a love can hit the top_  
_you gotta play around_  
_and soon you will find that there comes a time for making your mind up_

Sherlock was having a very curious reaction to all the dancing and singing of John’s. To the way John looked directly at him when he sang these awful songs, so sincerely, and it was getting harder and harder to tell whether or not John was drunk.

“No,” said Sherlock softly at the way John’s eyes were regarding him with such hopeful affection, “I don’t recall it.”

“How about Katrina and the Waves?”

“How does it go?” Sherlock had no idea what had made him say that, but John obliged.

 _Love shine a light, in every corner of my heart_  
_Let the love light carry, let the love light carry_  
_Light up the magic in every little part_  
_Let our love shine a light, in every corner of our hearts_

John finished the sample and he was standing close to Sherlock. Very close. Very very close. “That was in ’97,” he said, though the words he spoke and the thing he meant seemed to be completely different things.

Sherlock appeared to be hearing the different thing as he leaned close to John, too (as though he were a compass and John, magnetic north). When he spoke, that too seemed to be in some strange code. “I haven’t heard that song before. It seems there are a lot of songs I have never heard. You should teach them to me.”

John swallowed and swayed closer to Sherlock. “I’d be glad to. There’s another, you know. Another song we won with. Back in ’76.”

“Yes? How does it go?”

They were both speaking so softly, so close to each other that even in this noisy pub (or perhaps not so noisy; the karaoke seemed to be done with – Sherlock wasn’t really interested; what interested him was John. Dilated eyes, lips parted, pulse tripping and yet so completely calm. There, the lick of the lower lip, and John’s blue eyes fixed on Sherlock’s mouth. Sherlock licked his own lip, all unconscious of the mirroring, his own eyes fixed on John’s mouth as John sang.)

 _Your kisses for me._  
_Save all your kisses for me_  
_Bye bye baby, bye bye_  
_Don't cry honey don't cry…_

And Sherlock stole the last note by pressing his lips to John’s.

And John willingly gave up the chorus to kiss him back.

And they stood there in the _Harp and Horn_ pub, kissing, while pyrotechnics and glitterbombs and fanfares went off on the screen for the winner of Eurovision 2015 – a mere reflection of the pyrotechnics, glitterbombs and fanfares going on inside the heads of one consulting detective and one kickass army doctor in a tinsel wig.

 

**Author's Note:**

> For those who like my work here - i have a new book coming out next year! A Holmesian book no less! [All the details are here](https://harrisheart.wordpress.com/2015/05/17/announcement-improbable-press/) if you'd like to visit.


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